Francisco Estrada Belli (Ph.D., Boston University), specializes in Maya archaeology, Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems. He is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a National Geographic Explorer. He is the author of “The First Maya Civilization. Ritual and Power before the Classic Period” (Routledge, 2011) the first book on the origins of Maya civilization since 1977. He directs a multi-disciplinary archaeological project in the Holmul region of Peten, Guatemala, focusing on early developments of Maya civilization, human-environmental dynamics and Classic period political organization. He co-founded the Maya Archaeological Initiative, a non-profit organization that promotes research and youth education on Maya heritage. He is one of the co-directors of Guatemala’s Pacunam Lidar Initiative, the largest archaeological survey ever undertaken in the Maya lowlands.
Headshot Photo by Jesus Lopez.
Books
The Archaeology of Complex Societies in Southeastern Pacific Coastal Guatemala: A regional GIS approach
This piece of research seeks to highlight and test a series of models for social, political, economic and settlement change in southern Mesoamerica. Based on recent studies in the area (1995-97) Francisco Belli outlines the theoretical premises and methodology of his research, using GIS to elucidate changing patterns of population and settlement growth and decline, changing economic strategies, social organisation and administration. This volume contains material (settlements, site plans, stratigraphical information, details on settlement organisation, art, architecture and trade patterns) from the Preclassic, Classic and Postclassic periods, used to test diffusionist versus indigenous models for the development of societies.
The First Maya Civilization: Ritual and Power Before the Classic Period
When the Maya kings of Tikal dedicated their first carved monuments in the third century A.D., inaugurating the Classic period of Maya history that lasted for six centuries and saw the rise of such famous cities as Palenque, Copan and Yaxchilan, Maya civilization was already nearly a millennium old. Its first cities, such as Nakbe and El Mirador, had some of the largest temples ever raised in Prehispanic America, while others such as Cival showed even earlier evidence of complex rituals. The reality of this Preclassic Maya civilization has been documented by scholars over the past three decades: what had been seen as an age of simple village farming, belatedly responding to the stimulus of more advanced peoples in highland Mesoamerica, is now know to have been the period when the Maya made themselves into one of the New World’s most innovative societies. This book discusses the most recent advances in our knowledge of the Preclassic Maya and the emergence of their rainforest civilization, with new data on settlement, political organization, architecture, iconography and epigraphy supporting a contemporary theoretical perspective that challenges prior assumptions.
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